Game of chance

From
Robert Beech and Joseph Chamberlain

Philosophy untested by experiment is dangerous. George Dyke (Letters, 29 July) dismisses the possibility that a combination of a 5p coin attached to a 10p coin would be equally likely to fall either way up.

I make no claim to statistical significance, but, until boredom set in, I tossed such a combination 250 times. The scores were&colon; 5p coin uppermost, 125 times&colon; 10p coin uppermost, 125 times.

Dyke isn’t the only one to use the equivalent of a smooth-sided coin to ensure complete randomness. In Guys and Dolls, Big Julie from Chicago plays with his own dice, from which the spots have been removed. Fortunately, he …